© John Monteith, Crash, Oil on Drafting Film 2008

Lost Highway
John Monteith Solo Exhibition

December 10, 2010 – January 29, 2011
Opening Reception: December 9th, 2010, 6 – 9 p.m.
In-Gallery Artist Talk with Elle Flanders, filmmaker and artist: December 11, 2010, 3 – 4 p.m.

O'Born Contemporary
131 Ossington Avenue
Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 6
Toronto, ON M6J 2Z6
416. 413. 9555
info@oborncontemporary.com

O'Born Contemporary is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Lost Highway by artist John Monteith.
 

"Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion."  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lost Highway is a three-part installation comprised of five paintings of urban spaces, one composite portrait made from one hundred layered photographs of a bedroom in the early morning light and a suite of text drawings. Each set relies upon a contingent relationship with the others coalescing around snap shots and words isolated from context.

Working seamlessly at the intersection of drawing, painting and photography Lost Highway presents itself as an exhibition of fragments representing three years of local observation and study of shifting social space.

The words and phrases Monteith represents operate as symbols of uncertain meaning that cannot be made clear and precise. These nouns, adjectives and phrases reference titles, dates, times, films, books, locations, current events, cultural shifts and political ideology.

Using the photographic negative as a starting point for his paintings Monteith explores the breakdown of the image of the urban. Working with oil on layered sheets of drafting film his paintings are schematic; ideas are laid out, plans constructed. Representing locations of disaster, car-crashes, and bombings, Monteith's paintings come together and fall apart. Estranged, they occupy a place between moments in defiance of their familiarity as places we know.

As an installation, Lost Highway is a space that questions the relationship text has to image. Rather than dictating meaning, the text works ask of the viewer to draw upon his own history and associative faculty in determining narrative.

John Monteith's Biography:

Born in 1973 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, John Monteith graduated in 2008 from the MFA program at Parsons the New School for Design. His work has been represented in a number of solo and group exhibitions including K-48 "Kontinuum," No Soul For Sale at both the Tate Modern, London and X Initiative, New York, The Toronto Alternative Art Fair International, and "Zwischen" at Galerie Stefan Roepke, Cologne.

Additional projects include "Living Room" commissioned by Flux Factory in collaboration with openhousenewyork, and "River's Edge", a site-specific installation for the DUMBO Art Under The Bridge Festival.

His work is featured in a number of international collections including the New School in New York. His publications include Charley, www.artinamericamagazine.com, K-48, The New Yorker, British Good Housekeeping, Toronto Life, and Style; winning the Kenneth R. Wilson Silver Medal for Best Art Direction of an opening Spread, Canadian Business Press.

He has been awarded grants from The Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.